With a varied background in areas as diverse as farming, mathematics and graphic design, Sumner Stone found himself working as the Director of Typography at Adobe Systems from 1984 to 1989. During that time, he undertook an ambitious project – designing a super family that would incorporate different type styles in an integrated fashion. This extensive endeavor would lead to the creation of the ITC Stone Serif typeface, along with ITC Stone Sans®, ITC Humanistic® and ITC Stone Informal®. All of these subfamilies contain a roman and italic in medium, semi-bold, and bold.

ITC Stone solves the issue of mixed styles in one context with its harmonized balance in cap height, stem weight and proportion across all three subfamilies. All of the Stone types can be mixed successfully with each other in newsletters, business correspondence, books, and packaging. In 1992, John Renner expanded on the superfamily and designed companion faces for ITC Stone Sans and ITC Stone Serif that included linguistic symbols used by the International Phonetic Association.

ITC Stone Serif is appropriate for use independently or in tandem with its associated subfamilies. The unity and legibility of the entire superfamily, along with its phonetic faces, makes it very effective in applications that involve the textual representation of speech sounds as in dictionaries, language guides, and linguistic texts.